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Cricket games do pretty well in India. Here's an interesting article on Mitashi, who were India's official Sega Mega Drive distributor, and who later became probably the biggest brand of Famiclones (and Mega Drive clones) in India. The Indian developed PS2/PSP cricket games did well too.

Having lost Columbus, Maze would have lost ground to Nintendo in the form of Samurai as well, but in 1995, Nintendo's biggest rival Sega entered the market. Distributed by Shaw Wallace Electronics, it was not doing too well. Dugar says he saw an opportunity to recover lost ground with Sega, and pitched for the distribution rights.

"Sega could not succeed in India because the price was very high," says Dugar. "The Mega Drive 2 cost Rs. 18,000. Then they dropped to Rs. 14,660. Later on we came into the picture. I took a challenge and we took the whole lot of Sega. We dropped the price and we gave cartridges free with that. Sonic and Michael Jackson - two cartridges we gave with that and it took off." With the initial association made, Dugar managed to push an idea for an India specific distribution bundle, which would come with a free copy of Brian Lara Cricket.

"Sega Japan specially worked out a plan for us and we brought a good quantity of the game and the console," he says. "Also whatever previous unsold consoles we had, we took that and bundled it with the game as well."

...

The first killer-app, Cricket

Much like its first push with Sega, with Mitashi too, the first big break came with cricket. Its first successful game was an 8-bit cricket game, simply named Cricket. Considering that the world had moved towards devices that were exponentially more powerful, the move was an unexpected one, but it was successful.

"The success of Brian Lara Cricket and Sega was the inspiration," says Dugar. "At the time India was an emerging market for 8-bit games and volume and population was increasing rapidly. We were selling good numbers. And not just us, other local console brands too such as Media and Mega. There were 55 brands in the country at the regional level. Gaming was so popular in India."

To capitalise on this, Dugar and Handa invested heavily in their hardware business. In order to make it happen Dugar began getting all the necessities in order beginning with integration options. He says he personally oversaw every facet of the operation from the semi-conductor level to software for making the cartridges on which the game would be on. There was also a question of coding the game itself. For this, he enlisted a now defunct company in Xi'an China called Profine.

"It was very tough for me to teach Chinese people to make a cricket game," says Dugar. "I was 80-90 days in China for one-and-a-half years. Finally we came up with the product." While coding and manufacturing was taking place, Dugar also had to record audio clips, which was done in India. "The game had commentary every time you hit a four or a six," says Dugar. "This was recorded here."

Cricket proved to be a huge success for Mitashi. To the point where Dugar sold it in other countries where the sport was popular.

"We sold 185,000 cartridges in this country in 2 months time at Rs. 225 a cartridge," he says. "I put my whole stake for cricket game, Rs. 3.5 crore for development as well as the raw material. I used my total capital on one product. The margin was okay but later the product gave me lot. At the time it was a huge amount of money, people were calling me crazy."

In 1999, there came a turning point when Dugar and Gada decided to launch their own electronic gaming consoles at low prices to increase penetration. And thus was born Mitashi, which in Japanese means 'to watch'. They imported low-priced consoles from China. They also rolled out games like Contra, Mario, Roadfighter and Pooyan played on an 8-bit cartridge. Sales were nothing to write home about.

Mitashi's big break came when they used their in-house R&D centre in Bhiwandi on the outskirts of Mumbai to develop a cricket game. That product, Dugar says, became an instant hit and sold one million pieces.

Two copies sold? That's not a bomb guys, stop trolling!!!

Gamasutra.

UK Sales are down-to-flat on a value basis this month, compared to January 2014. Down about 8.6% on a units bais.

MCV UK has started reporting revenue in integer multiples of millions of British pounds. So it's possible that the value they report over the course of a 4-week month could be off by nearly £2 million (i.e. just under £0.5 million per week, enough that it didn't round up). If that were true, then the revenue would have been up by just right at 1%.

Hmm I don't really get the Nintendo bit. All of those games sales LTD combined is greater than a million? Doesn't seem too impressive, nor something BIU would give an award for. Is it just a quip in the article?

I do not think this is a controversial position to have so I do not know why that shows he is a fanboy.

On Topic - I am glad these consoles are doing well. 2015 seems to be a great year for both consoles and I hope more people transition quickly to the current gen. Damn Ori and Bloodborne alone makes this an amazing first half start!

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Hmm I don't really get the Nintendo bit. All of those games sales LTD combined is greater than a million? Doesn't seem too impressive, nor something BIU would give an award for. Is it just a quip in the article?

It's in the segment of Mobile games where they talk about the continued mobile boom and that handhelds demand continues to be strong, especially the 3ds.
Then they point out the nintendo first party titles which sold more than a million combined.

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Really doubt that's a substancial rise. I mean, I don't think the numbers are anything to write home about
Same goes for Driveclub (and Forza Horizon 2) back when it used to be in the top 20 and some people were hyping the numbers up and claiming it to be the next Gran Turismo (perhaps they were being sarcastic I hope)

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Rockstar/Take 2&#8217;s 3 week consecutive spell at the top ends as &#8216;Grand Theft Auto V&#8217; drops to No2 (-7%). It does mean that these 2 titles are neck and neck right now when it comes to the number of weeks they have each had at No1 (seven) and the number of consecutive weeks (three). EA&#8217;s &#8216;FIFA 15&#8217; remains at No3 (-5%) and Deep Silver/Koch remain at No4 with last week&#8217;s new release &#8216;Saints Row IV Re-Elected / Gat Out of Hell&#8217; (-38%). The tail end of the retail promotion on &#8216;Call of Duty: Ghosts&#8217; (-37%) sees the title only dropping 2 places from last week to No7.
The only other news this week is 505 Games&#8217; &#8216;Terraria&#8217; climbing 15 places to No13 (+77%) thanks to the launch of PS4 and Xbox One versions.